#errant wings

The book literally opens with Asher’s wings emerging from underneath the skin, and it is described in graphic detail—they rip through his flesh and leave blood on the floor.  Even worse than the pain, however, is their white feathers, indicating Asher is an angel wing, not a devil wing with bat-like wings.

The story takes place in a vague land’s major city (more on that later) that is assumingly a theocracy, but it’s not specified.  Regardless, the government has a system for foundlings to be raised until their wings emerge at 16.  If they are an angel wing, they basically are made to work as a confessor under the care of a religious leader known as a watcher.  If they are a devil wing, they are assumed to be an upstart troublemaker, and the city pretty much throws them away to rot.

Not that devil wings will rot quietly, of course.  The system doesn’t care about them, so they make trouble for the system; however, they are also the scapegoats for trouble when it arises, even if they weren’t actually responsible.  Asher was counting on being a devil wing like his boyfriend, Raum, and acted accordingly, spraying graffiti and wrecking havoc without a care in the world.  But then his stupid wings, three years late, emerge, and they’re pure white angel wings.  (Angel & devil wings can be any color btw; the difference between them is angel wings are feathered & bird-like, while devil wings are pointed & bat-like.)

The fellow foundlings he was raised with visit him as he recovers from the wings’ emergence, lying in bed with stitches.  This is how we meet Raum, his devil wing boyfriend who works as a tattoo shop, and Amy, an aroace angel wing who likes writing stories in her free time, and perfectly encapsulates what an angel wing should be: kind, patient, loves helping, and a good listener.

You might be asking yourself at this point: what exactly are foundlings?  Well, they are “parentless children who sometimes appeared on doorsteps,” whose only difference from a regular human is (1) their purple tongues, and (2) the wings that emerge from their backs once they are 16.  The government took over handling foundlings, and made “foundling houses”, employing “house parents” to raise the foundlings until their wings emerge, and they are either given a “nest” to reside in as a confessor (for angel wings) or thrown out to fend for themselves (devil wings). 

Because of them being children who emerge from nowhere to suddenly exist on ones doorstep, they are seen as supernatural, and angel wings are given divine importance, while devil wings are branded as unholy ones.  As the book states, “The connotation [of the terms angel & devil wing] was always problematic, however. Unfortunately, the city fully leaned into it. Angels were good, devils were bad.”

Angel wings mean Asher has a duty to the city, and that’s the last thing he wants.  It ruins everything that he had planned, and as an angel wing, he is expected to be a holy, ethereal figure, approachable & soft.  Not the tattooed, piercing-covered punk he actually is.  He can’t even buy condoms from the convenience store without the clerk’s eyes practically building out of their head, because angels are supposed to be chaste, too.  It pisses him off, to be trapped in a box of expectations he didn’t ask for or want.

The book basically chronicles Asher’s attempts to sometimes hesitantly fit in the box, but mostly try break out of it.  To discuss this in detail, I will have to go into spoiler territory.  Skip to the “SPOILERS END HERE” section if you want to avert your eyes.

**SPOILERS START HERE**

At first, Asher tries to work with his new title of angel wing.  This leads him to the only watcher who is interested in him, Bartholemew.  Judith acts as his social worker, basically, and contacted all of the watchers on Asher’s behalf; only old Bart here was interested.  Asher has built up a reputation around the city as a rebel, which is good if he had devil wings, but not angel wings.

The meeting with Bart goes poorly, because Bart is a traditionalist with a stick up his ass.  He hates Asher’s tattoos, his piercings, the fact that he has a boyfriend.  It’s clear he wants Asher in order to “fix” Asher into the perfect angel wing, be the watcher who domesticated a renown beast of a man.  Asher sees right through him, and tells him to fuck off.

Bartholemew reminded me of Christians I’ve met before who take one look at me (queer, agnostic, no longer Christian) and see me not as a person, but a pet project.  The kind of “man of God” who wants you to repent, no matter the personal cost to yourself.  An easy person to hate, to put it simply.

Once Asher rejected Bartholemew, I wasn’t sure where the story was going to go.  But then, Amy & Raum find a rouge angel wing in town, and go with Asher to speak to him at a bar.  Said angel wing is named Vale, and he gives Asher advice over a game of pool.  As they do so, he dissects the system that put them in this mess in the first place:

“No one knows what we’re actually for. Angel wings or devil wings. No one’s bothered to compile a real history of when we first appeared or tried connecting the dots. No one literally cares about our supposed history. Their goal is for [angel wings] to be so content, so full of joy and pleasure from carving out a piece of your soul for the city, you just disappear. . . Devil wings have it the same. The city gives you no outlet, no place to call home unless someone extends an olive branch at great risk to be ostracized. And still expects you to be the scapegoat for everything. They hardly give you a chance to carve out your own place, unless you work harder than everyone else. They just hope you disappear. Leave, kill yourself, or get yourself killed—anything so they can wash their hands of you and go back to pretending you weren’t there. Angel wing or devil wing, the city is not on your side. It wants us both folded into the fabric of the city, never to be heard from again.”

This troubles Asher & Raum, but especially Amy.  Being at the mercy of the city, not truly getting paid or even taught how to drive, is a scary position to be in once you think about it.  Asher’s reaction is summed up thusly: “Vale had confirmed that everything Asher felt about the system was right. It was tailor-made to contain the unknowable. If you didn’t fit into its confines, it wouldn’t do anything to help you.”

He considers leaving entirely, as Vale was able to find some footing on his own, but hesitates.  The city is the only home he’s ever known, and Raum & Amy are there. Where would he go?

At this point, my thought was that Asher, Raum, & Amy were going to find out the truth behind the foundlings.  Where they come from, why they appear on random doorsteps, why the government puts them in awful boxes.  However, that’s not where the book went, which I will discuss more in the critique section.

In the end, Asher returns to the foundling house, only to find that the city went over Judith & Addam’s heads and, at Bartholemew’s insistence, signed Asher away to our big bad Bart.  Judith tells Asher the cold, hard truth:

“What I want doesn’t matter. What you want doesn’t matter. You are a ward of the city and they can make whatever decision they want for your future. I’m just here to see you to your wings.”

Asher manages to run away, and happens to do so right in front of Vale’s car.  He gets in, and they drive off.  The two have a good talk, and Vale encourages Asher to live life on his own terms, screw what the city wants.  He offers to let Asher come live at his place on the shore, and gifts Asher a tarot deck, as he does readings and has many of them.

Asher visits Amy & Raum, and with Raum, he burns down the nest he was supposed to be in with Bartholemew, something Vale had also done before leaving.  However, the possible consequences of this hit him hard afterwards: as devil wings are scapegoats, and Raum was with Asher when the place burned, Raum could be blamed for the arson.  Asher makes the painful decision to leave town with Vale.  The arson is eventually blamed on a lightning strike.

The book ends from Amy & Raum’s perspective, looking over Asher’s letters.  They are described in a “tell” sort of way, much to my disappointment, but they do say that Asher has a surprise for them.  When they go to Raum’s apartment, there is Asher, here to stay this time.  That is how the book ends.

It’s a happy ending, yes, but I just know more shit is gonna do down. . . It can’t be that simple, right?  No, the city wants a firm grip on angel wings, and I don’t think it’ll let Asher go his own way that easily.  Maybe I’m just cynical lol.

To conclude the spoilers section, I’d like to highlight the title drop, which I thought was very beautifully done:

“If we’re heading out, we should get going to beat traffic,” Vale explained. “We’ll stop at a gossipy gas station I know and make a show that there’s two of us errant wings together” “Errant wings?” Asher asked. Vale smirked. “I’m certainly not an angel. Are you?” He slid into the driver’s seat. Asher took a moment to linger. Errant wing didn’t sound so bad. Fit Asher more than angel ever did.

According to Mirriam-Webster, errant is an adjective that means, “straying outside the proper path or bounds.”  It perfectly describes foundlings who break out of the system’s box.  Fuck.  Yeah.

**SPOILERS END HERE**

I found Errant Wings to be well-written, with a beautiful writing style and great pace.  I will say that some sentences are juuuuuuuust on the edge of being run-ons, and there are some confusingly-phrased lines here & there.  But overall, the writing is very smooth, visceral when it needs to be in both physical & emotional description, even doing well on the exposition.  The dialogue is fantastic too, and this interaction will especially live rent-free in my head:

“What’s life but a bundle of things we regret?” Vale chuckled derisively. “I’m over it. He’s clearly not. Happy to kick his ass again until he gets over it.”

“Is that all life is?” Asher asked softly, but Vale didn’t answer.

I also have to shout out the author’s GORGEOUS illustrations that they did themselves!  The cover is beautiful, as is the art on the itchio page, from Asher sitting on the ground at the bottom of the descriptions, to his, Amy, & Raum’s character introductions in the devlogs!  It’s incredibly impressive to not only have written a book, but also illustrate the characters yourself!  They have a fantastic, eye-catching style that I adore.

The characters are great.  I love our main trio the most; Vale is a fun character too, even if his existence in the story is a bit too convenient, lol.  Raum & Asher are so cute together, and Raum is the perfect caring boyfriend to Asher; Raum is babygirl and no one can tell me otherwise.

Now to what could be better.  Right now, my biggest qualm with the book is its worldbuilding.  It doesn’t make clear when in time it takes place, or exactly where.  Behold, my attempt to solve this mystery:

At first, I assumed we were in the modern era, and nothing in the 1st chapter contradicted that.  When Raum’s motorbike appeared in Chapter 2, and it was “lost to the sounds of traffic” (which to me indicated cars, not horse-drawn carriages) as he drove away, I thought that confirmed my suspicions and that settled the matter.  However, later in the chapter, Amy is mentioned to have spent a lot of time “steal[ing] away Judith’s typewriter”, not personal computer or laptop, so I readjusted, thinking perhaps we’re in the late 1800s or early 1900s.  BUT THEN, she looks at a “digital clock on the shelf”, which indicates a clock with an LCD screen!  Digital clocks, while having existed since the late 1800s, weren’t widely distributed until around the 1970s (if my research is correct) with the breakthrough of LCD technology!  That year was also (again, if my research is correct) when personal computers became mainstream, so why are there typewriters?

This is just in the first two chapters, and I could list plenty more things (instant cameras, passenger planes, cell phones, etc), but I’d rather not have your head spinning as much as mine is.  To put it simply, reading this book created a metagame of Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiago Asher And Crew, one that I still haven’t won because I can’t figure it out.

To put it very succinctly: the worldbuilding is sloppy.  It’s not just the time-travelling technology that makes it so, either—we don’t learn much about the world in general, not even the name of the city Asher is in.  It’s a big city divided into six districts, so it must be important, but we don’t really learn much about its standing in the larger society, or even what district Asher is in.  The fact that there are other countries is mentioned in passing, but never discussed.  I can’t say for certain whether the government is a theocracy because that isn’t specified, but religion does appear to rule the land (or at least, the foundlings) with an iron fist.

I will give it credit that the book tells us plenty about the assumed-theocracy’s stance on angel/devil wings, and about how the system of government in place affects them.  But it neglects other important things, such as whether raising foundlings is a typical or rare job, the currency/barter system of this world, etc.  A tighter grip on the worldbuilding would have done wonders for this book.  Right now, it all takes place in a vague “somewhere-land”; its details are hazy and not strong enough at the foundation.  I would love to see that rectified in a sequel.

Finally, while it looked like the story was going to reveal the grander mystery of the origins of foundlings, it instead decided to focus on Asher’s personal journey.  I don’t fault the book for that, but I really hope there is a sequel that explores foundlings more deeply.  We’re left with a lot of unanswered questions by the end, and while there is a happy ending, I’m sure what happens to Asher afterwards will be . . . complicated.

Overall, I really really loved this book!  I think it’s a fabulous read, and I would highly recommend you check it out.  Despite the qualms I have with it, I still enjoyed it greatly, and am extremely excited to check out more work from S. Jean.

If you want to read Errant Wings and a bunch of other cool books, please support the A Very Queer March! book bundle!  To be clear, I am not sponsored by them or anything like that; I just wanted to support some indie authors, so here we are!

ERRANT WINGS is my new coming of age story about Asher's life coming to a screeching halt upon getting angel wings instead of devil wings.